FILMMAKER SOCIAL↪

Sunday 6th August
11:30
Light House Cinema

Are you a filmmaker, film programmer, actor, writer, artist, producer? Or perhaps a GAZE aficionado and cinephile? Living in Ireland or just passing through Dublin for the festival? Come and join us for a relaxed pre-cinema festival social hosted by Festival Director Greg Thorpe where you can get a coffee, chat about cinema, swap your top tips for the festival, and meet other filmmakers. The social will take place at the Light House Cinema and all are welcome. If you need any kind of assistance to attend, are feeling shy, or would like to know more before you come along, just email julian@gaze.ie. Looking forward to meeting you all for festival gossip and networking. Please note there will be a second Filmmaker Social at the same time on Sunday also at Light House Cinema.

SALOMÉ↪

Sunday 6th August
12:30
The Stella Cinema

Dirs Charles Bryant & Alla Nazimova
USA, 1923
1hr 14m

Join us in the suitably sumptuous surrounds of The Stella Cinema to celebrate the centenary of Salomé. Try saying that after a martini. This legendary silent film based on the original Oscar Wilde play has a long and controversial history and a juicy enticing queer mythology that would've made Oscar proud. Co-directed by Charles Bryant with fabulous bisexual artist, actress, author and bon viveur, Alla Nazimova, the film was rumoured to feature an entirely gay cast of actors (spot the irresistible camping about), and boasts drag artists, decadence and of course dramatic decapitation! All s ensitively done, of course. The spartan sets paired with sumptuous avant-garde costuming - far ahead of its time - draw on original illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley from Wilde's play text, and the film itself now seems tantalisingly close to the era of dear Oscar.

The screening will be followed by a panel of Wildean wits and clever queens gossiping about this hundred old beauty and we would love you to be there.

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FINLANDIA↪

Sunday 6th August
13:00
Light House Cinema

Dir. Horacio Alcalá
Mexico / Spain, 2021
1hr 37m

The chill of distant Finland is a recurring metaphor in this magical realist feature, but it's the deep sun-drenched heart of rural Mexico that forms the setting, with its unreal light, ancient traditions and spiritual symbolism. The muxes are the focus of Horacio Alcalá's story, a community of people who live between genders, and the director uses every tool in the filmmaker's armoury to bring these vivid outsiders to the screen with tenderness, authenticity, respect and majesty. As the muxes community struggles to keep body and soul together, the encroaching forces of capitalism, colonialism, time, binary gender and eventually Mother Nature herself seem to be pitched against them. This is a story of spirit, tradition and love. There are moments so visually stunning that time - another key theme of the story - seems to stand still. Swathes of colour, breath-taking mise en scene, pin sharp dialogue and a luxurious love of light and shade make this a genuine piece of art. This is a rare chance to appreciate this level of filmmaking on a big screen.

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Pre-Feature Short:

BRIGHT HEART
Dir. Tarek Lakhrissi / France / 2023 / 14m
After being pursued by a black-gloved biker, Jahid flees to a museum for safety. Inside he finds strange and beautiful apparitions that open his mind to the possibilities of the world in spite of its dangers.

LUCID NOTIONS↪

aemi SHORTS & IN-CONVERSATION

SUNDAY 6TH AUGUST
13:00
IRISH FILM INSTITUTE
1hr 41m

2023 marks the fourth consecutive year of aemi and GAZE working together to present a programme of moving image work by artists and experimental filmmakers as part of the festival. This packed line-up moves from the earthly to the celestial to assert political dissent, express longing and physical desire, evoke the stranger facets of human intimacy and celebrate the healing strength of joy, community and creativity. As a programme made up entirely of brand new work this screening hopefully says something about the specifics of this often contradictory moment in time and the more lucid perspectives it can sometimes give us on the past, in all its chaos and complexity.

aemi is an Arts Council-funded organisation that supports and exhibits artist and experimental film. For more information visit www.aemi.ie

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WHERE'S DANNY?
Dir. Amy Pennington / UK / 15m
Drawing upon the media scandal headlined 'GAY SANTA GETS SACK' Amy Pennington drags up as a reporter to explore this hyperlocalised piece of queer history.

VAGARY
Dir. Ross G. Hewitt / USA / 2m
Through the remembrance of a dream, a teenage boy discovers his attraction to a male college student.

PET WORLD
Dirs Sofia Theodore-Pierce, Grace Mitchell / USA / 14m
Inspired by Amy Hempel's short story collection, Reasons to Live, and the work of poet Bernadette Mayer, an ensemble cast riffs on what we might discover about intimacy in parking lots.

FLARE
Dir. Kate Blamire / Germany / 27 m
Flare is a film made in alignment with the tides of artist Kate Blamie's illness and capacities, and is testament to the healing strength of joy, community, and creativity.

PORCUPINE
Dirs Nicolas Graux & Trương Minh Quý / Belgium-Singapore-Vietnam / 12m
In an abandoned hospital, ghosts still linger, strangers come and go.

THE CESSPOOL OF RAPTURE
Dir. Joseph Noonan-Ganley / Ireland & UK / 2017 / 17m
English-American couturier Charles James's (1906- 1978) spoken theories of sexuality, and fashion, in-be- tween camera work that journeys through zippers, stains, rips, abrasions, openings, and closings in a se- ries of his dresses.

BIGGER ON THE INSIDE
Dir. Angelo Madsen Minax / USA / 11m
Outer and inner space collapse in Angelo Madsen Minax's cosmic essay film, which diffracts feelings, memories, and longings during a blurry sojourn in a remote cabin in the woods.

SMALLTOWN BOYS↪

SHORT FILM SHOWCASE

SUNDAY 6TH AUGUST
15:30
LIGHT HOUSE CINEMA
1hr 28m

Inspired by this year's musical slant, Smalltown Boys riffs on the Bronski Beat classic to present a series of accomplished short films that consider what happens when gay and trans men leave town, come home, head for the hills, or seek out their past. Five films from five different countries tackle tall tales that span continents and decades in a rollercoaster of thrilling new shorts. Expect sexy, sad and sensational cinema.

aemi is an Arts Council-funded organisation that supports and exhibits artist and experimental film. For more information visit www.aemi.ie

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GOLDEN VOICE
Dir. Mars Verrone / Cambodia & USA / 2022 / 18m
Forty years after the Khmer Rouge regime, a transgender man returns to the village where he survived genocide and miraculously found queer and trans community, including the love of his life.

WHAT HAPPENED TO DAVID BURKETT?
Dir. Duane Michals / USA / 2023 / 3m
Memories of an old friend are filled with questions and longing.

LOLA VS ED
Dir. Lars Brinkman / Netherlands / 2022 / 10m
Lola is a drag queen finishing a night's shift. She gets in the cab with Ed, a quiet taxi driver who is confronted with his own prejudices and desires by the colourful Lola.

A PARTICULAR FRIEND
Dir. Eileen Tracey / Ireland / 2022 / 15m
When Father Matthew discovers an intimacy between two of the other priests at a remote conversion-therapy centre in Northern Ireland, his attempt to do the right thing leads to a crisis of faith and feeling.

WILL YOU LOOK AT ME
Dir. Shuli Huang / China / 2022 / 20m
As a young Chinese filmmaker returns to his hometown in search of himself, a long overdue conversation with his mother places the two of them in a quest for acceptance and love.

5PM SEASIDE
Dir. Valentin Stejskal / Greece / 2022 / 25m
On his 40th birthday, Nikos, a solitary truck driver, arrives on a remote beach to meet his former military buddy Christos, whom he hasn't seen for many years, with intense results.

THE RESERVOIR↪

IRISH PREMIERE

Sunday 6th August
IRISH FILM INSTITUTE
15:30

Dir. Diego Hoefel
Brazil, 2023
1hr 17m

Get ready to fall in love with Lucas (played with irresistible charm by Renato Linhares) a quiet, ruggedly handsome, stoical man on a mission. As he crosses the country to locate an obscure forgotten plot of family land from his late mother's will, Lucas encounters strange places, eccentric new friends, random dream-like circumstances, plus a long lost brother and a surprise romantic/erotic situation with a young motorcyclist. Director Diego Hoefel's gently powerful character study meets road movie pulls the viewer in using comedy, surprise plot twists and beautiful cinematography that just begs to be seen at the cinema. Brazil continues to produce contemporary characterful masterpieces of film and The Reservoir will definitely quench your thirst for great cinema with a big gay heart.

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Pre-Feature Short:

THE CALL
Dir. Jordan Rossi / UK / 2023 / 14m
Amir, a prospective university student struggling with his sexuality, calls Switchboard for advice at three crucial moments. With each moment of connection, Amir takes a step further in his journey.

UNGENTLE↪

Sunday 6th August
16:40
Light House Cinema

Dirs Huw Lemmey & Onyeka Igwe
UK, 2023
37m

Huw Lemmey - writer, artist, critic and co-founder of the magnificent Bad Gays podcast - joins us in person to discuss his co-directorial debut with acclaimed moving image artist Onyeka Igwe. Scripted by Lemmey and narrated by Ben Whishaw, Ungentle is a major new film commission exploring the knotty and intriguing relationship between the history of British espionage and male homosexuality, juxtaposing anonymous memoir with carefully crafted imagery hinting at symbolic attachments and a lost past. Ungentle's unseen protagonist recalls his young life and subsequent recruitment into the world of intelligence agencies, relating experiences of subterfuge, community, sexual and state secrecy between gay men and spies. Ungentle draws on the life stories of infamous Cambridge Five 'traitors' Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess, and civil servant John Vassall. These Cold War-era scandals featuring gay men linked homosexuality with betrayal in popular imagination. What emerges is a portrait of the often contradictory self-perceptions which marked 'Englishness', sexuality, and class in the mid-twentieth century.

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Pre-Feature Short:

NEW THREADS
Dir. Elspeth Vischer / Ireland / 2023 / 6m
Dir. Elspeth Vischer / Ireland / 2023 / 6m Imaginative and informative, New Threads combines archival and contemporary footage of Belfast with firsthand accounts of lesbian lives in the Troubles to imagine invisible queer women in the light of day.

20,000 SPECIES OF BEES↪

Sunday 6th August
17:50
Irish Film Institute

Dir. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren
Spain, 2023
125m

A young trans girl's tentative steps towards self-realisation, and her attempts to make her family recognise who she already knows she is, are sensitively traced in Estibaliz Urresola Solagruen's stunning debut feature. The eight-year-old protagonist has adopted the nickname Coco as she doesn't identify with Aitor, a male name assigned at birth. She would prefer to be called Lucia, but mother Ane (Patricia Lopez Arnaiz), who has two other children and an ailing marriage, is struggling to view her son as a girl. Ane, whose moral conflict is the fulcrum around which this beautifully calibrated film pivots, is following in the family tradition by working as a sculptor, under the disapproving eye of her own mother, Lita (Itziar Lazkano), who admonishes her for indulging Coco. It falls to her aunt, Lourdes (Ane Gabarain), a beekeeper in the bucolic Spanish Basque region, to see Lucia for who she really is.
Notes by David O Mahony, IFI.

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Pre-Feature Short:

THREE WISHES
Dir. Will McConnell / Ireland / 2022 / 10m
Three teenagers, wandering the streets of Belfast at night, ask themselves what they would do if they had three magic wishes.

HEDDA (AFTER IBSEN) ↪

IRISH PREMIERE
Sunday 6th August
18:30
Light House Cinema

Dir. Jen Heyes
UK, 2022
58m

Hedda is beautiful, aristocratic, and intelligent, loaded with social grace and a steely, clear, dispassionate charisma. Life really isn't good enough for Hedda. Like any of us, in life there are moments when we feel that this frustrating business of existence — as lived on our darkest days — really isn't good enough for us either… Set in a Lynchian world of dream imagery, drama, bespoke sound design, music and chanteuse style singing; the iconic avant-garde performer David Hoyle stars as Hedda in this one-person, cinematic/theatrical reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, created and directed by Jen Heyes, with original composition by Tom Parkinson. HEDDA (After Ibsen) moves past the obvious to create a darkly surreal show for everyone that doesn't reduce it to our binary traditions. Shot on location at Soho Theatre, yet cinematically ambitious, HEDDA (After Ibsen) is a story of many faces - the absolute power of manipulation, influence, the control of obsession and dark psychological unrest. This is a contemporary unpacking of Ibsen's original text from inside the hinterland of the artist's imagination. Heyes and Hoyle's reimagined Hedda is both musical and darkly surreal, moving us far beyond the traditional binary. As Ibsen himself said: 'Hedda is first and foremost a human being.'

David Hoyle and Jen Heyes will be in conversation following the screening.David Hoyle is our special guest at this year's GAZE Film Festival. On Friday evening you can see them perform their live show 'The Ten Commandments' at Project Arts Centre. David also appears in Afterparty, part of the Mighty Real shorts selection on Saturday evening.

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Pre-Feature Short:

PRIVATE VIEW
Dir. Sarah Myland / UK / 2023 / 17m
Two British artists: the lesbian portrait painter Sadie Lee and the non-binary writer Libro Levi Bridgeman happen to have been born on the same day. They meet to collaborate on a portrait of Libro and discuss their lives from the 1980s onwards. Now, after 3 years, Sadie is ready to uncover the painting. This short documentary follows Sadie and Libro's friendship and the surprising reveal.

SOMETHING YOU SAID LAST NIGHT↪

Sunday 6th August
20:45
Irish Film Institute

Dir. Luis de Filippis
Canada/Switzerland, 2022
1hr 36m

As a young trans woman named Ren (Carmen Madonia) anxiously slips into a rest stop bathroom, our shoulders hike with fear for her; but Ren is only nervous because she has taken up vaping again and is trying to hide it from her overbearing mother. It's easy to see why Something You Said Last Night has been called 'subversive' and 'revolutionary' for depicting a trans character in quiet, everyday situations without dwelling on her identity. But it would be a disservice to only highlight what this film doesn't have. In a painfully intimate film so full of Ren's character that she threatens to walk off the screen, out of the cinema, and over to Gay Spar for a new vape cartridge, De Filippis has created a minutely observed version of the 2020s coming-of-age film. Following Ren, her headstrong younger sister and her chipper Italian parents on a family vacation, Luis De Filippis' feature debut is rife with the quotidian tensions that make and break our relationships every day. A twenty-something artist tries to make the transition to adulthood while fearing life outside the family nest. An absent brother looms over birthday celebrations. Petty arguments turn into shouting matches. Playful teasing leads to a smashed phone. Little apologies bring declarations of unconditional love.

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Pre-Feature Short:

GLITTERBUG
Dir. Tania Notaro / Ireland / 2023 / 14m
Set in 1990s Dublin, two young female DJs with dreams of making it big in London are grounded from fantasy to reality when one of them is diagnosed with HIV.

ALMAMULA↪

Sunday 6th August
21:30
Light House Cinema

Director Juan Seabstián Torales
France/Argentina/Italy, 2023
1hr 34m

'He's not the first boy missing in the forest.'

Beware the Almamula… This deeply atmospheric queer drama from Argentina creeps towards the precipice of horror with captivating results. On the brink of adolescence, young Nino - gentle and bemused - is queer-bashed in his hometown, yet the blame is placed on him for his supposedly unsettling influence. His family retreats to a small town for a fresh start but it's only the beginning of their woes and discomfort. As the forest at the edge of town seems to assert an unnatural hold over the townsfolk, Nino hears tell of Almamula, a mythological creature from Argentinian folklore that supposedly wreaks punishment on those who are impure in thought and deed. Director Juan Sebastián Torales weaves a fairy tale-like spell in this totally original coming-of-age narrative. Nicolás Díaz as Nino possesses a compelling screen presence that belies his age and is the cautious mystified centre of this delightfully dark voyage into fear, adulthood, religious control, and burgeoning desire.

DIRECTOR'S PICK

'Almamula was my highlight from an extremely high-quality selection at this year's Berlinale. The audience was transfixed from the outset and the beautiful yet eerie quality of Torales' cinematography demands to be experienced on a big screen. Unsettling pristine filmmaking.'
Greg Thorpe, Festival Director, GAZE

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Pre-Feature Short:

CRACKS WILL COME
Dir. Daniel Mateo Vallejo / Colombia / 2023 / 18m
Keisi is forbidden from being their true self in their service job at an art gallery, but the line between this institution and their identity begins to blur in Keisi's fantasies of art and nature.